


Ugly Side

by Viridian5



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Drama, Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-11-28
Updated: 2004-11-28
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Really, Turlough and the Doctor are rarely honest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ugly Side

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for “Resurrection of the Daleks.”

“I trust that you haven’t given him any recent refills,” the Doctor said.

“Oh, no. Once he finished his pot we wouldn’t give him any more, not since we saw the effects. But he didn’t want any anyway,” the restaurant’s proprietor answered.

Sometimes the local cuisine and drinks had an unexpected effect on his companions. “Thank you. I’ll take responsibility for him from here.”

Looking somewhat like a slumped bundle of sticks with a head, Turlough sat at the table in the far corner with a melancholy look on his face, seemingly done with the yelling fit that had led the restaurant’s workers to call the Doctor. It still surprised the Doctor that Turlough hated Earth and the Earth boys school he’d been left at so much yet continued to wear the uniform.

With their height and pallor, he and the Doctor stood out and attracted notice amidst the smaller and darker Asiad simply by existing here, something that had worked for and against them at different times during their struggle to free the Asiad from their overseers. Now, when Turlough had become inadvertently drunk and combative on the local tea, it helped them quickly find and contact the Doctor to tell him to pick Turlough up, because they knew whom Turlough belonged with.

The Doctor sat down across from him and asked, “Is there room for one more?”

“I am conspicuously alone,” Turlough answered, with a little of the edge that often sharpened his words.

It bit. They were both alone since Tegan had left. Perhaps her departure had inspired this bout of attempted oblivion. The Doctor himself had raged and despaired now and then recently. Despite her sharp tongue, Tegan had had a sweetness to her. Watching her flee from him in horror at the death and destruction that shadowed his life had hurt badly. The Daleks might have been the ones actually causing the death and destruction, but her reaction had felt like an indictment of him as well. Traveling with him had worn her out.

Everything seemed to be going wrong lately, and self-doubt crept in.

The rage he felt at the Daleks frightened him, but it diverted him from the melancholy.

Trying to keep things light, the Doctor said, “I’ve heard that drinking tea alone can be the sign of a problem.”

“Are you offering to get drunk with me?”

“You knew that the tea would affect you like this?”

“I know what intoxication feels like as it happens. I just kept drinking. But I hoped that it would be a happy drunk instead of a violent and finally maudlin one.”

“I miss her too,” the Doctor said softly.

“I shouldn’t,” Turlough said almost viciously. “She was a ridiculous little woman with a ridiculous accent who only tolerated me because we traveled together.”

“That’s not so.”

“I am not a likable person. I know that. I might have been once, but that was long ago.... They remade me into a liar and a traitor and worsened it by making sure I can’t even be good at lying and betraying. I’m transparent. You see through me all the time. You’re just too polite to say so. Or perhaps you’re too invested in keeping the peace.” His gaze burned, and his face appeared to sharpen.

Turlough had a viciousness he could turn on himself and others. Right now it obviously centered on himself. The toxic coating of misery on the anger and self-hate made it worse.

The Doctor rarely challenged Turlough on his lies or asked him questions about his past, not when the boy came across as so skittish and wounded. Sometimes, though, the Doctor wondered if maybe he didn’t challenge or ask to preserve his own peace of mind, because he didn’t want to know these things.

The Doctor needed to stop this, for Turlough’s sake and his own. “That’s the tea talking. Everything will be better when you’re yourself again.”

“It’s truth talking, and I will never be myself again.”

“You won’t even remember this tomorrow, I assure you.”

“Even if I did remember, I would lie and say I didn’t, and you would lie in pretending to believe me. You’re a far better liar than I am.”

It stung all the more for being true. But the Doctor had good reasons for what he did.

“The really horrific thing about being intoxicated on this tea is that I don’t feel sleepy at all. I may be up for hours yet,” Turlough continued.

“Let’s go back to the TARDIS.”

“Yes, I should stop making a public spectacle of myself.”

To the Doctor’s relief, Turlough went with him without protest and didn’t say anything else. In the TARDIS, Turlough retreated to his room.

When he came out the next day he claimed that he didn’t remember anything that had happened during his drinking, and the Doctor pretended to believe him.

 

### End


End file.
